First Time
by murderofonerose
Summary: A drabble arc of Ford/Arthur firsts. Slash, mostly fluff.
1. First Time They Kissed

**Warning:** Contains slash  
**Pairing:** Ford/Arthur  
**Words:** 717  
**Disclaimer:** Do not own.

I just woke up today and decided that fluff needed to be written.

And then it was! Imagine that.

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**First Time They Kissed**

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Arthur Dent's first kiss happened under a table. He was six years old, and was conscientiously helping a girl find some feathered thing she'd dropped. Only, he hadn't been given a satisfactory explanation of what the feathered thing looked like. (Later he would come to suspect that there never had been a feathered thing at all, but that was quite beside the point.) The point was, she was under the table looking with him and suddenly leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the lips, giggled in that slightly embarrassed way girls do when they want to seem daring without sacrificing modesty, and insisted that now they had to play house and he had to be the husband.

Ford Prefect's first kiss was probably not Zaphod Beeblebrox. On the continuum of all the kissing Ford has done over his lifetime, though, that's as far back as he can remember – partly because of time, partly because of alcohol, and occasionally also partly due to repression. Zaphod stands out because he was probably the first really good kisser Ford had occasion to run into with his lips, and because Ford actually knew his name at the time. He doesn't remember the exact circumstances, of course, but there was an awful lot of alcohol involved.

Arthur and Ford's first kiss is like neither of those. It isn't immature and bashful and really just a lead-in to playing house all afternoon, and neither is it obscene and sloppy and really just a lead-in to sex for the sake of sex. There is _some_ alcohol involved, because Arthur would ruin it by trying to talk too much if he weren't just tipsy enough to forget to, and because Ford generally dislikes being sober on principle. But neither of them is really _drunk_. They _will_ remember this in the morning.

Remember how Arthur was looking so sad about his planet being blown up, in the reflection of his jynnan tonnyx, and Ford decided to cheer him up by telling silly stories, and Arthur ended up laughing at some of them in spite of himself.

Remember how Ford had thought it was so odd to see Arthur smile again because he hadn't done it in a while, and leaned in for a closer look, and Arthur had acquired a funny _why are you staring at my mouth_ look.

Remember how Ford had met Arthur's gaze and how then Arthur had acquired a slightly more wistful _why aren't you staring at my mouth_ look, and after that it was only natural to lean in.

They'll remember that, okay, maybe Ford _was_ a little bit drunk, because the kiss tasted like several more different kinds of drinks than just a jynnan tonnyx. Arthur, in particular, will remember not really minding. There wasn't really time to mind, anyway. Because of, you know, the surprise. Of lips. He's no stranger to kissing, certainly, so he knows what to do and what to expect, but that doesn't mean he expected to expect it.

By morning they'll forget the grating squeak of Ford scooting his chair closer, and the fumbling of Arthur's hands before finding Ford's upper arms and holding on gently. Ford will forget the little moment of surprise when he realized that Arthur was actually kissing back, and quite earnestly at that – because he's Ford zarking Prefect, and who _wouldn't_ want to kiss him.

Morning is an imperfect way of referring to it, because there is no morning in space. But, regardless, when they wake up in the morning to find themselves together in Arthur's bed, under the covers but still fully dressed (if a little rumpled) except for shoes, they'll remember it's because Arthur decided to go to sleep for the night and Ford decided to follow him. They'll remember kissing again, heads sharing a pillow and arms sort of awkwardly placed because there's really nothing you can do with the arm on the side you're lying on that's very comfortable.

At some point in the night they've moved around a bit. Ford yawns and rolls over and kisses Arthur good morning, and Arthur makes a face because the morning breath is spectacularly bad, and Ford laughs because of course it is, what does he expect?

And that's what happened the first time they kissed.


	2. First Time They Touched

**Warning:** Contains slash  
**Pairing:** Ford/Arthur  
**Words:** 595  
**Disclaimer:** Do not own.

Drabble attack! This is really more of an arc than a cohesive story.

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First Time They Touched**

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Touching is all relative. There's a difference between touching and _touching. _

The first time Arthur _touched _someone was just a few months before going off to university; a girl he'd been seeing for almost a year and still thought he would marry some day. Lying together on her bed (because the bed was the proper place for these things to happen, wasn't it?), his shirt on the floor, her blouse just a little bit undone, her bra somehow _definitely_ undone, and their hearts beating fast and quick and not quite in time. Every move timid, because they're still figuring out exactly how this is supposed to work.

Then her parents came home, and he was caught fondling their only daughter's nipples, and that was sort of the end of that.

Ford's first touch was… probably not Zaphod Beeblebrox, but… Because when it comes to _those_ kinds of drinking games (which it almost always does) he likes playing to lose. A lot. Not all of it was great (as far as he can remember), very little of it was sweet, and virtually none of it mattered the next morning or a few days later.

Between the two of them, Arthur and Ford have touched each other often – carelessly, to say, "Let's go to the pub now," or, "Maybe you've had enough for one night" (which is never quite true), or, "So this is it, we're going to die" (which is never true either).

_Touching _is, of course, quite different. This is still so new, and what if Ford moves too fast or Arthur does something stupid and everything gets messed up? But, of course, it happens, and when it does there's so little time to think about it.

Arthur is backed up against a wall – "Zarquon, Arthur, not everything has to happen in bed" – and his hands are in Ford's hair and the whole situation feels so… so fluid. Not natural, exactly, because he feels that the word can't be stretched to include kissing eagerly against a wall with an alien man on a highly improbable spaceship, but everything leading up to this makes a peculiar kind of sense, so this must too. It fits. Like Ford fits against him. Just… does.

And then Ford's hands are in his dressing gown and under his pajama top, and _that_ is a phallus against his thigh, and he can't catch his breath long enough to panic, so he just doesn't.

Ford grins into the kiss, ecstatic that the human is okay with this much. He wants to touch, to possess with his fingers, to go everywhere and explore everything he can on Arthur's body. There doesn't seem to be any sort of time limit for this. He finds that surprisingly liberating.

His mouth slides down to Arthur's neck and he's _going_ to leave a mark there, just above the collar, because he can. The hands in his hair tighten as Arthur gasps – completely unlike any sound Ford has ever head him make before. Do that again, do that again, and he does, and he does.

It's been a while since either of them has touched anyone like this. For Arthur, a while is a year and a bit, and he feels almost nostalgic; for Ford, it's slightly under a month, and he feels almost reborn. A kind of baptism in the corridor.

In retrospect, they probably should have made it as far as one of their rooms. But Zaphod's double-take is epic, and even in retrospect Ford thinks it would have been a shame to miss seeing it.


End file.
